Africa: Claim No Easy Victories

Editor's Note

"Don't tell lies. Fight lies when they are told. Don't
disguise difficulties, errors, and failures. Do not trust
in easy victories nor in appearances. ... Practice and
defend the truth, always the truth, to militants,
leaders, and the people, whatever the difficulties the
knowledge of the truth can create." - Amilcar Cabral,
1965

These words from Amilcar Cabral, more familiar in the
shortened version "Tell No Lies, Claim No Easy
Victories," have inspired many not only in Africa but
also around the world. More than forty years after Cabral
was assassinated and almost fifty years after he wrote
these words, his counsel remains highly relevant to all
seeking not only to analyze reality but to change it.

The brief essay below was written at the invitation of
Firoze Manji and Bill Fletcher Jr. for their forthcoming
book, with almost 40 contributors, due to be published
later this year. I entitled my reflection "Telling No
Lies is Not Easy."

Coincidentally I am reading the new book by Nate
Silver, The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many
Predictions Fail - But Some Don't. Silver is probably
best known for his 538 blog in the New York Times (
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/) which
correctly predicted the electoral votes in the 2012
election [personal aside: my son, whose election blog
(http://www.abulsme.com/tag/2012-electoral-
college/) also correctly predicted the electoral
votes with a similar methodology, gave me the Silver book
for father's day.)

In many respects, of course, Cabral and Silver have
little in common. But Silver's book, which deals with
predictions in fields as widely dispersed as baseball,
politics, economics, the weather, and climate change,
clearly echoes several of Cabral's central themes. Pay
attention to reality, realize it is probably more complex
than you think, and, above all, recognize that you may be
wrong and be willing to correct course accordingly.

Silver cites a retrospective study of predictions by
television pundits, showing that the most popular and
self-confident pundits were also the least likely to make
correct predictions. Few of us may aspire to be
television pundits, but we should all regularly remind
ourselves to pay attention to new data and new insights
and to think again.

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor's note+++++++++++++++++

Telling No Lies is Not Easy:
A Reflection on Following Cabral's Watchwords

[Chapter to be published in the forthcoming book
Claim No Easy Victories: The Legacy of Amilcar Cabral, Edited by
Firoze Manji and Bill Fletcher Jr. Dakar: CODESRIA/Daraja
Press, 2013]

William Minter's most recent book is No Easy
Victories: African Liberation and American Activists over
a Half Century, 1950-2000, coedited with Gail Hovey
and Charles Cobb, Jr.

Although I was engaged with liberation struggles in
Mozambique and Angola from the mid-1960s, I never had the
opportunity to meet Amilcar Cabral. Nor have I ever
visited the countries for whose freedom he lived and
died. But like countless others in Africa and around the
world, I have taken inspiration from the clear-minded
guidance and analysis he provided while leading the
African Party for the Independence of Guinea-Bissau and
Cape Verde (PAIGC).

For me the watchwords from Cabral that have meant the
most are the call to "tell no lies, claim no easy
victories." There are many characteristics required for
effective participation in struggles for social justice.
But one is surely the determination to base one's actions
on an analysis of concrete realties, be honest with
ourselves about difficulties we face, and, as Cabral
noted in another context, "Always bear in mind that the
people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in
anyone's head. They are fighting to win material
benefits, to live better and in peace, to see their lives
go forward ... to preserve the future of their children."
[Guinea-Bissau: Toward Final Victory!: Selected Speeches
and Documents from PAIGC (Richmond, Canada: Liberation
Support Movement, 1974), 32. Although appearing in the
collection in the same text as "tell no lies," this is in
fact from another document, the Portuguese original of
which I have been unable to locate.]

While I have often cited these words, the request for
this article prompted me to look a bit deeper into the
context and to seek out the Portuguese-language original
of the "General Watchwords" for the party from which they
were taken. Both the Portuguese and my translation into
English are included at the end of this article. It is
clear "tell no lies" was not an isolated slogan, but part
of a complex reflection on the need for criticism and
self-criticism among members of the movement.

In trying to apply those guidelines today, in a
context
almost fifty years removed, we must, as Cabral
insisted, take concrete realities into account. We are
far from the era of disciplined and apparently unified
liberation movements (with both their strengths and
weaknesses). While the goal of national political freedom
has been attained, the broader goals for which Cabral
fought are far from achieved, not least in Guinea-Bissau,
which was the terrain of his party's armed struggle.

With globalized communications, his further
admonitions,
such as "Do not hide anything from the masses of the
people" and "Practice and defend the truth, always the
truth, to militants, leaders, and the people, whatever
the difficulties the knowledge of the truth can create"
are just as hard to implement as in his time, and perhaps
even more so. While PAIGC militants may have been able to
address "the people" in gatherings in the bush, the
constituencies for today's social justice movements are
almost always dispersed and diverse enough that they can
hardly be gathered in one place. Messages through
multiple technologies to "militants" and "the people" are
inevitably seen, heard, and interpreted or
misinterpreted by multiple other audiences as well.

That said, I am convinced that the fundamental
principles
of Cabral's guidance on criticism and self-criticism
still apply. And these watchwords fit within the broader
context of his determination to base strategy and action
on sober analysis of realities. [See also "Start out from
the reality of our land - to be realists," in Amilcar
Cabral, Unity and Struggle (New York: Monthly Review
Press, 1979) 44-63).] It is an eminently "scientific"
approach, where theory is used not as a lazy substitute
for empirical investigation but as a guide to it. It is
an approach which recognized that the same formula could
not be applied to situations as different as GuineaBissau
and Cape Verde, or even to different regions
within Guinea-Bissau.

It is also one in which fighting against an "enemy"
never
obscured the recognition that enemy forces were composed
of human beings, many of whom might become friends under
other circumstances. In this, Cabral shared the
conviction of leaders such as Eduardo Mondlane and Samora
Machel of Mozambique, that distinguishing friends and
enemies on the basis of race, nationality, institutional
affiliation, or other generic characteristics was a
fundamental mistake. And that assuming individuals and
political structures could not change was a recipe for
failure in the struggle. "Know well our own strength and
the enemy strength" was also a mandate to know how to win
new allies, including among the enemy forces themselves.

This short essay can hardly be adequate for an
extensive
discussion of the application of Cabral's principles to
specific situations facing us today. But it would be
incomplete without at least some mention of areas in
which, in my opinion, progressive forces have been
particularly weak in recent years, evading Cabral's
imperatives to investigate concrete realities and to
speak the truth.

Let me very briefly address two areas, as examples.
One
concerns the international debates about political
conflicts in Africa, including recent or forthcoming
military interventions. The second is the sensitive issue
of whether progressive as well as mainstream
nongovernmental
organizations are willing to live up to
Cabral's directives about truth-telling; or, in other
words, to practice for themselves the accountability and
transparency they freely demand of African and Western
governments.

Every internal conflict on the continent features
different narratives from parties to the conflict, which
are taken up and propagated by international allies. It
would be presumptuous for anyone to assume that there is
one easy "truth" in the conflicts in Zimbabwe, Libya, or
Mali - to cite only a few prominent examples. The only
country of the three I know enough about and have enough
personal trusted contacts in to write about at any length
is Zimbabwe (see, for example, my 2010 article with
Briggs Bomba:
http://www.africafocus.org/docs10/zim1004.php). But
in
reposting material from other sources in AfricaFocus
Bulletin, and providing brief introductory editor's
notes, I have to distinguish between analyses I regard as
worth reading and those which are so dubious they should
rank as "lies", or at least, using a term also cited by
Cabral, as based on superficial "appearances." [You can
see what I decided I thought worth reading, among sources
available to me, at
http://www.africafocus.org/country/countries.php, and
clicking on the relevant country name for the AfricaFocus
Bulletins on the country.]

Perhaps I am remiss in not naming names falling among
the
latter. But they include those who, decades after ZANU-PF
ceased to be a liberation movement to become the enforcer
of a new repressive and oligarchical system, insist on
supporting the incumbent regime in Zimbabwe simply
because its critics include Western governments. It
includes those who see developments in Libya as primarily
the outcome of a Western plot and disregard the agency of
Libyans themselves in his overthrow of Qaddafi, or
dismiss his opponents as Western dupes. And it includes
those who think there is any easy answer to the current
question of whether to intervene and who should intervene
against the Islamic extremists who have devastated
Northern Mali.

Rejecting such interpretations as "lies", or based on
"appearances", does not imply that there are not also
real questions about the motives and strategies of other
opposing forces, both internal and international. It is
not a blanket endorsement of those who now oppose ZANU-PF
or the Islamists in Northern Mali, or those who
contributed to the overthrow of the Qaddafi regime. It is
simply to say that in none of these situations, or in
other conflicts on the continent, is simply opposing what
the United States does or what the West does a substitute
for analysis of the concrete realities of each country,
its surrounding region, and changing international power
balances. Progressives may and will reach different
conclusions about the best course of action after making
such analyses. But the ideological shortcut of making
judgments based on "ideas in people's heads" rather than
analysis of complex realities, is clearly one that
Amilcar Cabral would have rejected.

Finally, a few incomplete and admittedly inadequate
words
about non-governmental organizations and the pressures
that work against transparency and accountability to
broader constituencies. A high proportion of such groups,
both mainstream and progressive, are governed by
selfperpetuating
boards of directors. For funding they depend
either on a small number of large institutional donors
(foundations or indirect government support) or
fundraising appeals to a large number of individual
donors, most of whom have no role apart from sending in
their donations. In most cases, membership dues from a
engaged and active membership are only a small proportion
of income at best, and the role of such stakeholders in
governance is most often token at best and commonly none
at all. The boards of directors therefore may have little
sense of accountability to their activist supporters or
feel any real obligation to keep them informed.

It would be a mistake to interpret accountability and
transparency as a dogmatic mandate to never have private
internal discussions or to "tell everything", regardless
of the consequences. Despite his call below to tell the
truth, regardless of the difficulties it may cause,
Cabral was well aware of the need for discretion in
public discussion of sensitive issues, such as the
difficulties his party faced from host countries such as
Senegal and Guinea (Conakry), or the support the struggle
received from Cuba. Nevertheless, I think many
nongovernmental
organizations, including progressive ones,
most often err on the side of secrecy in speaking with
their supporters about difficulties faced.

For much of the history of the organizations with
which I
have been most involved over my time as an activist, most
notably the predecessor organizations of Africa Action
(Africa Fund, American Committee on Africa, Washington
Office on Africa, and the Africa Policy Information
Center), this structural flaw was balanced by the fact
that foundation income was minimal and government income
non-existent. The bulk of individual donations, both
large and small, came from engaged activists who expected
and received accountability from those governing the
organizations, including regular reports on program and
financial status.

Yet all progressive activists are well aware of crises
in
multiple organizations run by progressive people whose
good intentions we respect, in which the constituencies
who have helped build the organization are kept in the
dark about current developments reflecting weaknesses. It
would not be appropriate to go into details, so as not to
violate Cabral's companion insistence in the text below
that criticism should not edge over into "intrigues." But
it is surely no secret to anyone concerned, for example,
that those who contributed their writing skills to
Pambazuka News over more than a decade have had no report
from the governing board of Fahamu on the crisis which
led to the resignation of the founding editor.

Most painful to many of us involved in Africa
solidarity
work in the United States has been the prolonged crisis
at Africa Action. In August 2010 staff unexpectedly
failed to receive their salaries. It was subsequently
discovered that a reserved endowment had been fully
drained, in part by fraud by an office manager and in
part by use of endowment funds for operating expenses.
Since then, the organization's board has managed to keep
a shell of the organization in existence. Yet more than
two years later there has still been no coherent
accounting to the organization's constituency of what
happened nor a strategy for the future which could
address the crisis of confidence among former staff,
board, and supporters of the organization. Despite the
good intentions of the board members, it is likely that
the failure to follow Cabral's advice by confronting hard
realities and "telling the truth" will have done as much
or more damage to the organization as did the original
financial crisis.

I am well aware that these brief remarks fall far
short
of any "full truth" or even a comprehensive analysis of
any of the issues raised. But hopefully they may serve at
least as a call to follow Cabral's example in analyzing
concrete realities more deeply rather than relying on
appearances, and in using criticism constructively to
learn from our own and other's mistakes.

Excerpts from Chapter VIII, "Apply Party Principles in Practice," in General Watchwords, November 1965.

[Alternate English translation of full text of
"General
Watchwords" is available in Amilcar Cabral, Unity and
Struggle (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1979), pages
246-249.]

1. Develop the spirit of criticism among activists and
officials.

Give everyone at each level, the opportunity to
criticize, give their opinion about the work and the
behavior or actions of others. Accept criticism, wherever
it comes from, as a contribution to improving the work of
the Party, as an expression of active interest in the
internal life of our organization. Remember always that
to criticize is not to speak ill or engage in intrigues.
Criticism is and must be the act of expressing one's
frank opinion openly, in front of those concerned, based
on the facts and in the spirit of justice, in order to
evaluate the thought and action of others, with the aim
of improving that thought and action. Criticism is to
build, to help build, to show genuine interest in the
work of others and the improvement of that work.

Combat severely evil tongues, intrigues, 'so-and-so
says,' unfair and unfounded criticism. To evaluate the
thought and action of a comrade does not necessarily mean
to speak ill of them. To speak highly, praise, encourage,
or stimulate is also part of a critique. Always be
vigilant against personal vanity and pride, but don't
stint on praise for those who deserve it. Offer praise
gladly and frankly to all those whose thought and action
serves well the progress of the party. ...

Learn from the mistakes we make or that others make,
to
avoid making new mistakes, to not fall into the traps
that others have fallen in. Criticizing someone does not
mean setting yourself against them or victimizing them.
It is showing that we are all interested in their work,
that we are part of one corporate body, that one person's
mistakes affect us all, and that we are vigilant, as
friends and comrades, to help them overcome their
shortcomings and increasingly contribute to the
improvement of the Party.

But critique (proof of the willingness of others to
help
us or our willingness to help others) should be
supplemented by self-criticism (proof of our own
willingness to help ourselves improve our thinking and
our action).

Develop in all militants, leaders, and combatants, the
spirit of self-criticism: the ability of each to make a
concrete analysis of their own work, to distinguish good
from bad, to recognize their own mistakes and to discover
the causes and consequences of these errors. Making a
self-criticism is not just to say "yes, I admit my fault,
my mistake, and I apologize," while getting ready to
commit new faults and new errors. It is not to pretend to
repent, while still being convinced that the other person
just doesn't understand. Nor should self-criticism be
performed as a ritual, while continuing to make mistakes.

Self-criticism is not doing penance. It is an act of
honesty, courage, camaraderie, and awareness of our
responsibilities, a proof of our willingness to do our
duty and do it well, a manifestation of our determination
to be better every day and give our best contribution to
the advancement of our Party. An honest self-criticism
does not require absolution: it is a commitment we make
to our conscience not to commit more errors, to accept
our responsibilities to others, and to mobilize all our
capabilities to do more and better. Self-criticism is to
rebuild oneself to better serve.

...

4. Practice revolutionary democracy in all aspects of
the
life of the party.

Everyone responsible for leadership must assume their
responsibilities with courage, should demand the respect
of others for their activity, and should respect the work
of others. Do not hide anything from the masses of the
people. Don't tell lies. Fight lies when they are told.
Don't disguise difficulties, errors, and failures. Do not
trust in easy victories nor in appearances.

Revolutionary democracy demands that we fight
opportunism
and not tolerate errors, baseless excuses, friendships
and camaraderie based on interests contrary to the
interests of the Party and the people, or the conviction
that any leader is irreplaceable.

Practice and defend the truth, always the truth, to
militants, leaders, and the people, whatever the
difficulties the knowledge of the truth can create.

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